Early Retirement

by Kate Sullivan

When Wilhelmina Berwick turned 65, she retired from the bank, shortened her name to WB, replaced her tasteful navy-blue suit with over-sized plaid flannel shirt and jeans, grew her hair long enough for braids and bought a used food truck with FRESH HOT FRIED CHICKEN emblazoned on the side. She planned to travel cross country, and even though she wondered what everyone would say at the bank, she decided she would just tell them there’d been a horrible death in the family, that her husband had been killed in a grizzly freak accident and that she needed time alone, but because Franklin was living in the ranch house next door, she realized she’d have to come up with something else. Wilhelmina had always wanted to be a singer-songwriter and she spent the next few weeks in her driveway, trying to figure out how to use the space inside the van. She decided not to remove the fryolator, thinking she could travel the country, sing her songs and sell French fries. Rolling a futon under the mini fridge, she wedged her old guitar between the seats, put a bucket with some toilet paper behind the driver’s seat and when a neighbor walking by with her chihuahua asked where she was headed, Wilhelmina said south of the border because the chihuahua made her think of Mexico. A few days later, after she painted a huge lime green saguaro (she liked the suggestive quality of the cactus) over the words FRIED CHICKEN, leaving the FRESH HOT, she pulled out of the driveway and headed south.

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Kate Sullivan likes to play around with words, music, and pictures. She has written and illustrated children’s picture books ‘On Linden Square’ and ‘What Do You Hear?’, sung chansons at NYC Mme Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and her fugue-ish ‘Fugitum est’ was performed at Carnegie Hall by The Kremlin Chamber Orchestra as part of their tribute to Mozart. She also likes to paint ostriches and plays the musical saw to impress people. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and her latest, SMOKE + MIRRORS, a collection of prose, poetry and paintings, is available wherever books are sold. Visit her website here.